1. Technical Field
The invention relates to geofencing for vehicles, and more particularly, to providing adaptive vehicle responses to differing jurisdictional requirements relating to vehicle operations, and still more particularly to limiting engine idle operation on commercial vehicles based on local/territorial regulatory regimes.
2. Description of the Problem
A geofence may be defined in part as a virtual spatial boundary. Geofences are a byproduct of the marriage of mobile, inexpensive telecommunications platforms and data processing systems. While not dependent upon global positioning systems in theory, their accuracy is greatly enhanced by making use of global positioning systems to provide accurate and precise determination of the location of the mobile platform. A geofence is manifested in programmed responses of a data processing system installed on the mobile platform responsive to changes in the platform's position. Typically the positions which produce a given set of responses define a contiguous region. The edges of the region become a virtual boundary or geofence. The spatial location of a geofence, that is the limits of region, have commonly been established by selecting a point feature, which may be a point defined by latitude and longitude, and then defining either a radius, or lengths for the major and minor axes through the point, to establish a boundary around the point. Geofences may also be constructed to conform to jurisdictional and other arbitrary boundaries.
Another development of significance to vehicle fleet management has been telematics, which may be realized in satellite enabled operational data uplinking from vehicles to remote servers and downloading of management and routing relating data from the remote server to the vehicles.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2008, the State of California limits idling of primary engines for commercial vehicles to no longer than 5 minutes. It would be advantageous if such a system operated automatically, and provided responses that alerted the driver/operator of the situation. Commercial operators can anticipate other jurisdictions will enact similar restrictions.